...account, if we take the additional figures in proportion to the number of vessels in our fleet. I think that otherwise we shall not succeed in reducing our fleet at all, since naval specialists, naturally becoming carried away with their work, will inflate every figure, whereas given the enormous expenditure we have allocated to aviation, we must be four times, ten times more cautious with regard to expenditure on the fleet, especially since there lie ahead further expenditures, probably very substantial, which will be occasioned by the incorporation of Vladivostok.

As regards Kamenev's considerations about giving the promised orders to the metal plants and Glavelektro, it must be said that we should give orders for the satisfaction of peasant needs, and in no way for such a thing as the fleet.

I therefore propose that, having reduced the total expenditure by three million, we calculate in what proportions this sum should be allocated to one or another purpose within the limits of the ship-repair program, and then calculate in what manner we could immediately begin transferring the said number of our ship-repair plants to metal goods necessary for the peasantry.

Lenin

Dictated by telephone 29 November 1922, at 7 p.m.

First published in 1959
in Lenin Collection XXXVI

Printed from the secretary's record (typewritten copy)

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